Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

 

Accountability breeds response-ability.

Each team engages in a simple weekly process that highlights successes, analyzes failures, and course-corrects as necessary, creating the ultimate performance-management system.

The cadence of accountability is a rhythm of regular and frequent team meetings that focus on the Wildly Important Goal®. These meetings happen weekly, sometimes daily. They ideally last no more than 20 minutes. In that brief time, team members hold each other accountable for commitments made to move the score.

The secret to Discipline 4, in addition to the weekly cadence, are the commitments that team members create in the meeting. One by one, team members answer a simple question, “What are the one or two most important things I can do this week that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard?” In the meeting, each team member reports first if they met last week’s commitments, second if the commitments move the lead or lag measures on the scoreboard, and finally which commitments they will make for the upcoming week.

People are more likely to commit to their own ideas than to orders from above. When individuals commit to fellow team members instead of only to the boss, the commitment goes beyond professional job performance to become a personal promise. When the team sees they are having a direct impact on the Wildly Important Goal, they know they are winning, and nothing drives morale and engagement more than winning.

Create a cadence of accountability

With Discipline 4, teams share accountability. Commitments are not only made between leaders and their teams; they are made between individuals on the teams. By keeping weekly commitments, team members influence the lead measure which in turn is predictive of success on the lag measure of the WIG®.

Where do you find people who are passionately committed to their work? You find them working for leaders who are passionately committed to them.

— Jim Huling, Co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution

Where execution actually happens

The fourth discipline is to create a cadence of accountability, a frequently recurring cycle of accounting for past performance and planning to move the score forward. Discipline 4 is where execution happens. Disciplines 1, 2, and 3 set up the game but until you apply Discipline 4, your team isn't in the game. 

This is the discipline that brings the team members together.

In Discipline 4, your team meets at least weekly in a WIG session. This meeting lasts no longer than 20 to 30 minutes, has a set agenda and goes quickly, establishing your weekly rhythm of accountability for driving progress toward the WIG.

Here's the three-part agenda for a WIG session and the kind of language you should be hearing in the session:

1. Account: Report on commitments.

"I committed to make a personal call to three customers who gave us lower scores. I did, and here's what I learned..."

2. Review the scoreboard: Learn from successes and failures. 

"Our lag measure is green, but we've got a challenge with one of our lead measures that just fell to yellow. Here's what happened..."

3. Plan: Clear the path and make new commitments.

"I'll meet with Bob on our numbers and come back next week with at least three ideas for helping us improve."

To prepare for the meeting, every team member thinks about the same question: "What are the one or two most important things I can do this week to impact the lead measures?"

The WIG session should move at a fast pace. The WIG session also gives the team the chance to process what they've learned. You should often ask each team member "What can I do this week to clear the path for you?"

Each commitment must meet two standards:

1. The commitment must represent a specific deliverable.
2. The commitment must influence the lead measure. 

If you simply tell your team what to do, they will learn little. What you ultimately want is for each member of your team to take personal ownership of the commitments they make. 

A Different Kind of Accountability

The accountability created in a WIG session is not organizational, it's personal. Instead of accountability to a broad outcome you can't influence, it's accountability to a weekly commitment that you yourself made and that is within your power to keep. When members of the team see their peers consistently following through on the commitments they make, they learn that the people they work with can be trusted to follow through. When this happens, performance improves dramatically. 

The WIG session encourages experimentation with fresh ideas. It engages everyone in problem-solving and promotes shared learning. 4DX produces results not from the exercise of authority, but from the fundamental desire of each individual team member to feel significant, to do work that matters and, ultimately, to win.

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